Don't base your testimony off of South Park

It's been another fantastic week here in sunny SoCal! We had a lot going on so I'll just dive right in! 🏼On Tuesday we had mission leadership council at the mission home. That was awesome! Some big changes were introduced, including the decision from the brethren that Zone Conferences will now be every 6 weeks instead of every 3 months. That means more teaching opportunities for us... The Taggart's trained on teaching repentance and baptizing converts, the worldwide focus for missionary work this year. Elder Thornton and I got to demonstrate teaching repentance to president and sister Taggart. I'll be honest, I was pretty nervous! Teaching the mission president and his wife in front of some of the missionaries that I look up to the very most was a little nerve racking! But the spirit brought peace to my mind and led the discussion. I learned so much from the comments of the diligent elders and sisters in mission leadership council. They are so great and are some of my best friends. 

Speaking of great missionaries, we got to go on two exchanges this week! I got to be with Elder Boyle and Elder Wilson. They are two incredible missionaries that I look up to a lot. Elder Wilson is in the Spanish program, and it was super cool to see how he has mastered the language throughout his 20 months as a missionary. It was a stark comparison from my one year of high school spanish back in senior year hahaha. "¡No hablo español!" is all I need! 

We got to attend two of the zone trainings this week as well. We also got to have a temple grounds walk! That is where missionaries bring investigators, recent converts, and less active members to the Newport Beach temple grounds for a short video and tour of the grounds. There is such a sweet spirit at the temple. It is one of my favorite places to be. I wish we could go more often. 

I went on splits with the bishop of the ward this week, bishop Hoover. We met a less active member and asked him why he doesn't come back to church. He responded, "well I just have a lot of questions about the church. I saw an episode of South Park and they brought up a lot of good points that I hadn't ever thought of before."..... this guy had been through the temple!! And he was basing his testimony on an episode of South Park! I'm sure there was more to it, because he was really an awesome guy and was super friendly to us and had no bad feelings towards the church. We invited him to find out for himself whether or not the church is true, to start reading the Book of Mormon again, and to come back to church. Moral of the story, don't base your beliefs on South Park. Please.

We also got to view the video that the church has created for this year's Christmas initiative! It's called, "Light the World"! It includes a beautiful little video and an awesome advent calendar with an activity every day that gives us an invitation to work on a specific Christlike attribute, and some ideas to help us do it. It will be released to the public on November 25, so I invite you all to check it out on social media or lds.org when it does!

Thanks for all of your love and support everybody! I hope you have a great week, and I love you!
1. Mission Leadership Council
2. Roasting Marshmallows on Halloween